


The Freshman

by InLoveAndSqualor



Category: My Chemical Romance
Genre: Bandom - Freeform, M/M, MCR, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-04-22
Updated: 2008-04-22
Packaged: 2017-11-04 05:13:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/390144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InLoveAndSqualor/pseuds/InLoveAndSqualor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Contest Entry<br/>Prompt/Theme: The Freshman by Verve Pipe</p></blockquote>





	The Freshman

_We were only freshman, but we thought we knew it all, we thought we were so wise.  
The peril of being young is that you think you know it all, you think you are invincible. The tragedy is that you don’t and you’re not._

_She was only a freshman. She thought she knew it all. She fell in love and I just fell._

_I couldn’t be held responsible._

_When she did that thing. When she touched her face. She looked like him. The way she ran her fingers down her cheek, let them linger at cheekbones, down her jaw line, to her chin. That was what he would do, when he knew I was looking. Looking a little bit longer than I should. He’d tease me with that. One of the most enticing sights I’d ever seen. And then when she came into my life, showed me kindness and love, and when she touched her face, I couldn’t resist. Was I responsible? Was it my fault that she fell in love? She fell in love and I just carried on in that lie, watching her, touching her, kissing her; all the while thinking of him._

_We lived without consequences until that day. The day the entire weight of the world became all too apparent on our shoulders. When I got the call it was all I could do just to slide down, down on to the floor, lean my head against its cold surface, cheek numbing slowly, and cry. Just sob until the tears wouldn’t come and my head ached from the heaving of my chest and the shaking of my bones. A week later, when I got that second call, heard the news; I was too numb to react. But I knew what he was doing. He was doing exactly the same as I had. The guilt, the shame, forcing him down to the floor, crying until the ability was lost entirely.  
The years have faded the memories, faded the pain. But the knowledge of our sins will never be erased. They are indelible. _

***

In the cramped dorm room cigarette smoke hung thick in the air. It visibly lingered. The smell filled Frank’s lungs, heavy and warming. It mixed strangely and pleasantly with the faint smell of spilt liquor and that indescribable scent of warmth that you only seem to encounter in a closed, confined space. Gerard was smoking. Elegantly he sat, in slumped repose, a cigarette settled between his lips lightly, so lightly that its weight made it point down at a slight angle. Consequently white smoke ran up and faintly curled over his features. In his hand he held a glass, half empty. He studied it intently through features plagued with thought. He stared at it as if within its depths he could see some image or scene lost to all but him.

“I’m really happy Gee. Like really happy,” Frank grinned broadly pouring out for himself yet another drink.

Gerard put his hand over his own glass, evading speech, avoiding looking up. Having to glance into his companion’s eyes. The real risk of being caught there and trapped forever.

 _‘Ok. You’re happy. Enough, stop parading it in front of me. Stop waving it in my face with such sickening glee,’_ Gerard thought with bile and vitriol that shamed him deeply and truly. 

‘It’s everything I want.’

“Gerard what are you thinking about?” Frank asked, a definite air of anxious pain apparent in his tone.

 _‘Bitterness,’_ his mind screamed in reply. 

“Nothing,” he spoke, he lied. 

Frank persisted. Tried to ignore the strange mood of his friend, hoped he could deter conflict, arouse some cheer. Create a comfortable farce.

“I didn’t know that this is what I wanted, but now it’s here it feels right,” Frank smiled again. 

_‘Who are you kidding? This is me you’re talking to. I know you. I know what you want. It’s not this,’_ he wanted to say, wanted to grab a hold of his companion and shout until his throat was sore.

Frank took a large swig of his drink and felt that resulting dry burning sensation of strong liquor. It burnt then numbed. His throat felt that harsh hot feeling asking him to cough, to react to the unpleasant taste. He stared at the top of Gerard’s head. He was slightly slumped forward now, the drink in his hand resting on his knee.

 _‘You’re drinking way too much for someone who says they’re happy. I should know,’_ Gerard mused regretfully.

Frank feared and came to the conclusion that he knew what was bothering his friend. Knew it all too painfully, it was too obvious. Frank had always been such a terrible liar and his attempt to make these untruths true, as if by saying them he could invoke their power and transform his mind, it wasn’t working.

“Gerard please…” Frank began.

Gerard did not respond, did not look up.

“We’re supposed to be celebrating here,” he sighed, his tone displayed early signs of defeat.

 _‘God, just stop. You’re driving me crazy here,’_ his mind retorted.

Anger took possession of Gerard, clouded his judgment and forced him to speak.

“Why huh? Because you’re going to give up everything. School. A future. To bring up a kid. You’re going to marry her, and for what? A sense of duty?” he said it all with such a strange air of nonchalance, such a total lack of emotion.

“Please just be happy for me,” Frank pleaded. He wanted so much, so desperately for Gerard’s approval, he always did.

“How can I? When I know it’s not what you truly want, not really,” His words were mixed with sadness and regret. Regret for even allowing himself to be backed into this proverbial corner. 

“Gerard… You don’t understand. How can you know what I want?” He said looking down, hiding his eyes, hiding his features; aware of the terrible fact that they gave him completely away.

 _‘Because you’re a picture. An oil painting. You always have been. I stare into your features and a thousand stories are told. I could always study you, your depths. I will always know your truths,’_ Gerard’s words unsaid, feelings untold.

Frank poured himself another drink. The bottle looked desperately empty to him now. He raised the rim of his glass to his lips. Let the faint residue of liquor splashes, from pouring, warm them, tingle them. Relished the faint sting. Then with a swift action he brought his head and the glass back. He placed the emptied vessel on the table with an overly carefully gesture, as if a clink might give away to Gerard how much he had been drinking, how drunk he was becoming.

“I think I should go,” Gerard sighed. 

“You know. You’re right I should have been happy for you….” He admitted, in words stained with guilt.

He hung his head, rising from his chair. Slowly, deliberately, he placed his glass on that same table, watching it as he did, never raising his eyes from those depths. Gerard hated the fact that his jealousy for what Frank had, will have, bothered him more than the fact his friend was clearly not happy.

 _‘I’m a bad person. The worst,’_ Gerard conceded, mourned.

“I need to go,” he affirmed through an unsteady voice.

Ashamed, defeated and tired; he started for the door.

Still sitting Frank caught Gerard’s wrist in desperation; and gasped in shock, as he was pulled up out of his seat by the opposing violent resistance of his friend.

 _‘You don’t even want. Don’t deserve what you’ve been given,’_ the venom sang in Gerard’s head. It begged to be articulated, thrown out through lips contorted in anger, in jealousy.

“Let go of me Frank,” he warned.

 _‘You’ll regret this,’_ his mind screamed in primal tones. 

_‘God why am I so angry at him?’_ His logic returned.

Frank held fast, but Gerard could feel Frank’s fingers trembling on his skin. This act of defiance must have taken all his nerve to maintain.

Gerard’s mind was racing, cruelly playing with his tortured psyche. It told him he was unclean, he was unworthy. Mocked him for his jealousy, for this intolerable want and need just to be, to feel happy even for the briefest of moments. Just experience for a day how he imagined Frank would feel with a girl and a kid and a real life. These were things he would never be allowed, could never let himself have. Lines blurred in his mind. Saw Frank with her and himself sitting there on the edge of their life, an extra, an unwanted addition. His anger began to morph, to warp, to shift entirely. Her. She was the problem. She was taking away the one thing in Gerard’s life that made it bearable… Well just. Frank. Frank made life livable, made existence possible. The realization of the truth, that in all honesty he had always known, felt uncomfortable. Truth suffocating in its unpleasant steady spreading across his mind. He knew now that the jealousy he had felt before was not for Frank’s happiness. He wanted Frank to be happy. But not with her. He wanted Frank to be happy with him. 

_‘Frank I want you,’_ he thought clearly for the first time. He dared not say it, confirm it. Make it true.

Full of hurt and rage he grabbed Frank’s fingers and wrenched them from his wrist. 

_‘I want you Frank, I fucking hate it. I despise the fact. But I know now. All those times I saw you look, saw you want me. I wanted you too,’_ Gerard spoke so clearly in his mind, but his lips refused to move, to speak. To make it real.

Anger spilled out uncontrolled, as he carelessly forced palms into the hollows of Frank’s shoulders, wrapped fingers round to touch blades. He just wanted to shake him so hard. His confused rage was barely containable. Gerard stared into Frank’s dilating pupils, his own darting back and forth searching for answers, try to impart hidden words.

Gerard tightened his grip. Desperation plagued every thought, every action.

“What do you want really Frank?“ He spat. 

And then allowed to set in an uncomfortable, yet heady, pause of silence.

“Just fucking admit it,” he screamed. 

He feared so deeply having to be the one to say it, to break their truce, their long unspoken abstinence.

With each word Gerard spoke, with each action taken, Frank could feel the desperation, the anger and the shear pain rising within him. He could feel it spilling out, hanging garishly in the air between them. And these tangible emotions where genuinely frightening, genuinely unnerving. It pained him to see Gerard so wracked with conflict, so out of his usual mode of cool controlled indifference. 

“Please Gerard,” He almost cried, pain physical and emotional becoming utterly unbearable.

Gerard relinquished his hold, only to slam his palms violently into the wall behind Frank’s head. He loomed over him, leaned in, held lips millimeters apart, and forced them to breathe the same stale air. 

“She’s not what you want, who you want and we both know it,” he whispered.

Gerard’s words were hot and pleasant as they spilled, poured out over Frank’s face. And shamed, he cursed himself for the obvious look of arousal he must have displayed. 

“So this is about you?” Frank retorted slowly, anger and malice were absent, and in their place were melancholy and the faintest trace of hope.

 _‘Yes,’_ his mind bellowed in the privacy of its depths.

“No,” he mumbled, the word intentionally repressed. Barely audible.

And then eyes rimmed in tears, limbs conquered by shakes, features destroyed by new desires, gave in.

“Yes…” He confessed.

Before Frank could respond, before he even had time to comprehend his lips were silenced by a violent attack. Lips collided with lips in a possessive act filled with the desperation of years of want. Frank felt searing pain as his head met the cold brick of solid wall behind him. Felt Gerard reach up and clutch his face, and Frank returned the gesture with matched force and desperation.

Hands desperately searched contours, shapes, inches of skin, that they had only dreamed of before. The world, reality, beyond their pained desire became nonexistent. They stumbled backwards locked in that possessive kiss and fell onto the single dorm room bed. 

Sometimes those long awaited, so dreamed of, so wished for, yet utterly immoral acts feel the most divine.

“Why Gerard? Why did you leave it until now?” Frank asked through a voice broken with desire, wracked with breaths labored by arousal and the wonder of fantasies realized.

But it was too late for questions, for words. They were locked in their destructive embrace, consequences yet to be revealed, forever to be repaid. 

***

_When she phoned and told me, I felt totally broken. She’d seen us, she’d come over to see me; and seen us. Seen what we should have never allowed to happen, to be. She told me she knew. She’d known all this time. And then with twisted bitterness, relished and uncontrolled, she told me. She’d had an abortion, she’d aborted our baby. No baby, no wedding, no happy ever after. The things she said, the things she called me. I knew I deserved my pain, her hate, but what had that unborn life done to deserve this? I dropped the phone as paralyzing sobs came uncontrollably. I fell to the ground and wept, wept with my head on the floor, for that life never given a chance to live. That life that now would never be. Guilt tore at every part of my being. Guilt that my careless sins had erased an innocent life._

_When the shit hit the fan Gerard up and left. Took off in his car and left me to rot. Left his girlfriend to rot too. And she did. She fell hard. She loved him. She swallowed a weeks worth of Valium and slept forever. When I got that call I was too numb, too utterly lost in my own tragedy to react. Instead of mourning I just heaped more guilt onto the pile._

_And now that we’re older and wiser; the years have passed and taken with them the sting of the pain. We never talk of those past terrible deeds, those failed relationships. Even after all this time the guilt is still there, will never leave us._

***

In the small dressing room, of yet another dingy club in the middle of god knows where, the cigarette smoke clings willfully in the air. It floats in front of eyes already sore with fatigue and tears; and cruelly stings them further. The smell of spilt liquor is apparent and mixes with tobacco; inducing memories of that night, that night so many years ago when the pair were freshman.

“You know Gee… We sit here like this every year. Every year since it happened, but we can’t talk about it. I mean we never do. We just sit here and drink ourselves into a state...” Frank said, voice so full of regret, so utterly defeated, resigned.

Gerard stands, stumbles up, intoxication desperately apparent.

And in response Frank rises fearfully, angrily.

“Don’t leave me to deal with this. I can’t. I need you here,” he pleads voice breaking.

“To do what? To sit here and have someone to cry with. I can’t do this anymore…” Gerard retorted, his words coming out just as broken and cracked.

Gerard sighed harshly and headed for the door. He needed to be alone, to not be here wallowing with a companion so utterly as guilty and resigned as himself.

Frank darted up out of his chair in response, kicking it carelessly as he rose. 

The effects of alcohol, consumed to suppress and drown all those painful unwelcome emotions, made his actions clumsy and heavy. Clearly impaired, from liquor, from feelings unkempt, he took a desperate hold of broader shoulders and implored with eyes red from tears. 

His companion, would not, could not meet his gaze.

Frank’s head fell, his grip tightened, and at a loss he tried to shake his friend, provoke any reaction. Together they tripped, Frank forward, and Gerard back until his back met one of the room’s cold walls. In front of Frank was a soul lost in agony, so utterly drenched in pain and guilt that Frank feared that his friend might drown in those feelings. 

He knew that he had to save him. He had to save them both.

He leant forward slowly, all the while searching for reactions, as he closed the gap between them. 

He ran hands down the tops of arms, over a heaving chest. Let fingers fall over sighing, aching torso, whose breaths were so completely and terribly pained. Hoped to soothe with his touch, but soon becoming lost in the guilty pleasure of exploring that other that he so desired. 

Relief and gratitude hit as hands returned his gestures, wrapping around his waist, moving back and forth, down to hips, back up and reaching around ribs. Hands unsteadily, slowly explored and in turn claimed a shivering body. 

All the while lips quivered in anticipation of touch, but refused to, resisted the compulsion to meet, as if the memory of those tragedies prevented them from it. Memories of the deeds of the past disallowed such intimacy. 

Painfully eyes met and the realization of what they were allowing to happen hit. Hit Gerard the hardest.

“We said we’d never do this again… After what happened. We don‘t deserve this. We don’t deserve any trace of happiness,” Gerard whispered. He sounded broken, defeated.

Frank let go, failure felt imminent. He feared Gerard’s guilt ran too deep, still burnt so strong. 

Gerard was giving up; Frank could see him physically falling apart, as he let himself slide down the wall. His knees bluntly greeting his chest, chin falling to rest on his knees. For a moment he sat and then shaking he leant down and lay on the cold floor. With his head resting on that surface he began to sob violently. 

Frank leant down and placed a cupped hand under a trembling cheek. Gerard looked into his friends eyes mournfully. He looked so unlike himself, so like a child. He had the appearance of that freshman from years gone past, so that to Frank for a fleeting moment the years of guilt and pain were erased and they were back in that dorm room, two youths so utterly innocent and entirely arrogant. 

Guilt stung Frank but in his friend desperation danced amongst regret. Frank saw him imploring, begging for help and he knew this was their last chance of redemption. He lay down carefully, softly, next to him on the ground and together they lamented, grieved the loss of two lives that their love, their desire, had helped to destroy. Mourned the deaths and felt stricken with guilt now countless years old. Frank had witnessed with true comprehension, with actual realization for the first time, his friend, in torment, in agony and he knew that this was not right. They had paid their penitence, suffered tenfold for their sins. They had punished themselves, each other for too long. It was time for absolution, to pardon and forgive each other. 

Slowly he pulled himself towards his friend, looked into his eyes. Reached out and rested his hand on Gerard’s exposed cheek and with the other reached around his neck and pulled his friend close with unsteady resolve. Tear stained features looked confused but relieved as Frank leaned in and kissed his anguished friend. 

Tenderness was the only thing present in that impossibly soft kiss, so long awaited. It had nothing of the passion or lust of that kiss from years past, it was love refined and made physical, made real. It spoke words that Frank could never muster, never articulate, it told of agonies gone past and of hope for the future. It said so clearly: ‘I love you. I always have.’ 

Frank wrapped arms around a shaking waist and pulled Gerard closer. Pulled him on top of his own body, so that he felt the weight of his lover pressed pleasantly on his torso and chest. Frank relinquished lips and stared into eyes still touched by agony. 

“Gerard we were only kids, freshman. We didn’t know, couldn’t know what are sins could do…. We need to forget. We need each other….”

A tear escaped from Gerard, rolled down his face and fell gently on to Frank’s already damp cheek. 

“It’s going to be ok,” he whispered, smiling for the first time in what felt like years.

Frank smiled tenderly at his friend and he knew things were going to be better. Their love could make things right, help heal their wounds. It would transform guilt. Love could be, would be purest alchemy.

**Author's Note:**

> Contest Entry  
> Prompt/Theme: The Freshman by Verve Pipe


End file.
